"...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology. ... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. ... As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician’s paradise.” - Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, 1960.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Indymedia.us Fights Off Bogus FBI Subpoena and Gag Order

A police fishing expedition has been fought successfully over the course of the past year by one of the Indymedia.us system administrators and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), largely in secret due to dodgy gag orders -- which actually didn't have any real legal standing to begin with. Earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us sysadmin Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. EFF argued that the overly broad demand for Internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair’s First Amendment rights, by ordering her not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a U.S. attorney’s permission.